Twitter joke theft is a real thing, and the social network is taking action

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The practice was brought to the internet's attention by @PlagiarismBad, before the alleged injured party -- a freelance writer named Olga Lexell (@runolgarun) -- took to Twitter to explain the situation. The fracas centres around one tweet, posted 9 July, that reads: "saw someone spill their high-end juice cleanse all over the sidewalk and now I know god is on my side". @PlagiarismBad identified five tweets, from five separate accounts that had repurposed the joke and had their handiwork deleted with this message replacing them: "This Tweet from @XXX has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder."

Lexell, whose tweets are now protected and whose profile describes her as "writer who brought up a point about intellectual property", explained in a tweet posted by The Verge: "I simply explained to Twitter that as a freelance writer I make my living writing jokes (and I use some of my tweets to test out jokes in my other writing). I then explained that as such, the jokes are my intellectual property, and that the users in question did not have my permission to repost them without giving me credit."

Lexell went on to tell The Verge that this is not the first time Twitter has complied with similar requests she has made, and that the tweets are usually removed within a few days of those complaints being made. There is also, according to the article, an absence of any followup investigation on the behalf on Twitter.

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Twitter's copyright complaints procedure is simple enough, and it doesn't claim to be the arbiter of the law, stating in its Rules section: "If you are unsure whether you hold rights to a particular work, please consult an attorney or another adviser as Twitter cannot provide legal advice."

All you need to lodge a complaint, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), is the copyright holder's signature, a link to the original work, identification of the infringing material (i.e another link), your contact details and a statement explaining your position and confirming that "the notification is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorised to act on behalf of the copyright owner".

The responsibility, essentially, is on the complainer, and takes the burden off Twitter which only acts as facilitator. It goes on to warn that anyone that misrepresents their position and makes a false accusation knowingly could be liable for damages "including costs and attorneys' fees incurred by us or our users".

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It's unclear what happens if someone just gets it wrong, but the whole system is setup to ensure Twitter does not have to investigate, nor will it take the blame if your claim was false.

What the social network does do, however, is send your complaint to the accused if the material is taken down, along with instruction on how to how to file a counter-notice. Twitter always, as with all DMCA notices it processes, sends that complaint on to Chilling Effects, where a record will be published for all to see.

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Although from the Rules section, it sounds as though any and all requests will be processed, Twitter does have a team that analyses and decides upon each request individually. Its Rules just go to great lengths to ensure it's not liable for an outcome that might irk the internet: like removing a hijacked joke.

The majority of DMCA Twitter cases don't make headlines, and generally involve links to illegal material. However, it's not the first time a joke posted to Twitter has been plagiarised. In 2014 Chris Scott's tweet, "Oh hi Becky who refused to kiss me during spin the bottle in 6th grade & now wants to play FarmVille, looks like tables have fucking turned", was retweeted tens of thousands of times legitimately. But then ended up, as would be expected, on Tumblr and other sites without identification -- a sign of s-ocalled "attribution erosion", said writer Jonathan Bailey at the time. And as one writer points out, jokes have always been -- in the offline world -- highly susceptible to attribution erosion. The internet has just massively exacerbated this, and paved the way for more legal disputes. And bots aren't helping matters much -- Lexell told The Verge these spam accounts are largely to blame for the repurposing of her material.

So maybe, when AI is FINALLY able to make us all laugh, this will become a redundant debate. Humans just won't seem that hilarious anymore, and creativity will die at the hands of our amusing robot overlords.